She had volunteered as a teacher in Jaipur, Northern India, during a break from study.

But Ms Purcell soon realised her life was easy compared to those of the students she was teaching.

With a class of 48 children and very few resources at her disposal, Ms Purcell had been thrown in the deep end and was desperately learning to swim.

Then, one afternoon, outside class, she spotted a young child scouring through raw sewage searching for recyclable plastic to sell.

“I looked closer and realised it was one of my own students,” she said, the image still clear in her mind.

Then majoring in Ancient History, Ms Purcell returned home determined to start a revolution in teaching for Indian children.

She quickly switched her major to education and got to work.

Three years later, Ms Purcell’s charity Tara.Ed is setting down roots in India and Australia.

“Tara means ‘star’ in Hindi,” she said.

The project mostly works to link Australian university students with Indian schools.

The trainee teachers, who have all of the theoretical knowledge of their degree but little practical experience, work side-by-side with Indian teachers in the classroom.

Ms Purcell believes that by introducing new methods for Indian teachers, thousands of students can benefit for generations to come.

It is a two-way exchange, with the Australian student teachers also learning from their experienced counterparts.

She hopes the exchange is cultural as well as educational.

“My big concern is that there is so much negative media about India and people don’t get to see the good things,” she said. “Good things are happening.”

Those good things are the dozens of young teachers heading overseas from this year on.

In 2009, Macquarie Uni­versity professor Ian Gibson took three students to the subcontinent in a pilot program.

This year, three more will spend time with three Indian schools.

“We want three more schools by next year,” Ms Purcell said. “And 20 by 2020.”

Australian schools, including Hill Top Public, are also benefiting from the friendship.

In 2008, they exchanged videos with a Mumbai primary school and Hill Top donated hundreds of books to be sent to their new friends.

“We brought donated laptops into the schools and taught the kids to use Skype so they could talk online to kids from sister schools here in Australia,” Ms Purcell said. “Suddenly we saw their whole world just open up.”

The budding relationship was interrupted by the Mumbai terrorist attacks, where armed militia stormed the city and shot dozens of people.

But Ms Purcell said the books were finally on their way, thanks to the support of shipping company Main Freight and with the help of some funds raised by the Hill Top school community.

She will soon join the books in India, having just knocked back an offer to study in the masters of education program at Oxford University.

Ms Purcell will be based in Bangalore, in southern India, for two-years just to make sure Tara.Ed is really well-established.

“We hope to reach 20,000 children by 2020,” she said.

The best way to build sustainability was to work with the teachers rather than the students.

“We don’t just want to go into a school for five years, make a difference while we’re there, and then leave and that’s the end of it,” she said.

“We want the program to continue working long after we’re gone.”

The star teachers, who have benefited from the training given to Australian undergraduates, will go on to teach thousands of star pupils.

And after that, Ms Purcell can sleep soundly once again.